(6) Union rules applicable to the sales of goods are still fragmented, although rules on delivery conditions and, as regards distance or off-premises contracts, pre-contractual information requirements and the right of withdrawal have already been fully harmonised by Directive 2011/83/EU of the European Parliament and of the CouncilĀ (3).
Other key contractual elements, such as the conformity criteria, the remedies for a lack of conformity with the contract and the main modalities for their exercise, are currently subject to minimum harmonisation under Directive 1999/44/EC of the European Parliament and of the CouncilĀ (4).
Member States have been allowed to go beyond the Union standards and introduce or maintain rules that ensure that an even higher level of consumer protection is achieved.
In doing so, they have acted on different elements and to different extents.
Thus, national provisions transposing Directive 1999/44/EC significantly diverge today on essential elements, such as the absence or existence of a hierarchy of remedies.
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(70) Since the objective of this Directive, namely to contribute to the functioning of the internal market by tackling in a consistent manner contract law-related obstacles for the cross-border sales of goods in the Union, cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States, due to the fact that each Member State individually is not in a position to tackle the existing fragmented legal framework by ensuring the coherence of its law with the laws of other Member States, but can rather, by removing the principal contract law-related obstacles through full harmonisation, be better achieved at Union level, the Union may adopt measures, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity as set out in Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union.
In accordance with the principle of proportionality, as set out in that Article, this Directive does not go beyond what is necessary in order to achieve this objective.
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